The Song of the Sea

23. Sail Ho!

Jacob held Raephier tightly in his arms until he knew he'd fallen asleep. Only then did he let go and carefully slide out of bed to pace the room.

Even before he'd heard Raephier's story, he knew he'd had a hard life, but this just topped it all. How Raephier was still functioning was a mystery to him. He was sure that if he had endured all that Raephier had in his short life, that he would have been permanently curled up into a ball of despair.

But if there was one thing he was going to take from Raephier's story, it was that keeping secrets was never a good idea.

So with that thought in mind, he went to see if Pete was still awake.

He found him smoking a cigarette on the bow of the ship.

"I thought you'd given up," Jacob said, nodding towards the cigarette in Pete's hand.

Pete jumped, having obviously not heard Jacob creep up on him in the dark.

"Shit, don't sneak up on me like that!" Pete said, before taking a last puff on the cigarette then tossing it out into the sea.

Jacob chuckled. "Sorry."

"What are you doing up anyway?" Pete asked.

"I needed to talk to you," Jacob replied.

"And it couldn't have waited till morning?" Pete asked with a raised brow.

"No," Jacob said firmly, shaking his head. "I've always been honest with you Pete, and recently I've been hiding a secret from you and I don't like how that's sitting with me, so I need to get everything out in the open."

There would have been silence if it wasn't for the constant noise of the sea lapping up against the ship, and the sound of the light breeze whipping at the sails.

"It's about the Siren, isn't it." Pete eventually stated.

Jacob sighed and nodded. "I can't use him as a weapon. I won't ask that of him. And even if I did he wouldn't do it."

To Jacob's relief Pete didn't seem that surprised. In fact he barely showed any emotion.

"So we're basically back to square one? Without any plan?" Pete asked.

Jacob felt the guilt squirm around inside of him.

"That about sums it up," he mumbled.

Jacob kept his eyes on Pete waiting for his reaction. Would he be angry? Disappointed? Would he blame Jacob?

But then Pete suddenly burst out laughing.

Jacob frowned but couldn't help the small twitch at the corners of his mouth.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

Pete took in some big gulps of air to calm himself down and ran his hands roughly through his hair several times.

"Why does this always happen to us?" he said, and Jacob was relieved to see he was still smiling.

Jacob shrugged. "I guess we're just incredibly unlucky."

"Or lucky. Depending on which way you look at it," Pete shot back.

Jacob nodded his agreement and stared into the dark night as he thought back to the many scrapes he'd gotten into with Pete, even when they were young children. They often hatched schemes and plans together, but inevitably, nothing ever went as they'd intended. But even though their plans often failed, they always somehow managed to come out of it unscathed.

"So what do you propose we do?" Pete asked, his face turning serious once more.

"We need to think of a plan," Jacob replied. "We need to do something different or that damn pirate will just take all our supplies again."